Knicks’ late antics hit home

Can angry Celts do anything about it?

Mark MurphySunday, April 28, 2013

Credit: Patrick Whittemore

‘You can be angry all you want, but how are you going to channel that anger? . . . Are you going to show that anger against these guys who are kicking your butt?’ — Celtics guard Jason Terry on team’s reaction to Knicks’ Game 3 antics

WALTHAM — The Celtics carried certain images off the floor Friday night, saved on their mental hard drives for a little rumination.

There was J.R. Smith’s dunk late in the Game 3 loss, which the New York Knicks swingman punctuated by squaring up to face the end zone crowd at the Garden with a self-satisfied smile. There was Carmelo Anthony’s laugh at Brandon Bass, after the latter slapped the ball out of the former’s hands at the start of a timeout.

And then Smith returned with a Flagrant 2 elbow to the chops of Jason Terry, close enough to the Celtics bench that coach Doc Rivers was able to restrain his enraged guard.

Terry still wasn’t talking about it yesterday, though he did follow a “no comment” with a “no question” when asked if the play gave him a little extra fuel heading into today’s Game 4.

The Celtics, booed off the floor by a crowd that had shown unconditional love for the many first responders and medical personnel in the Garden, dragged the memory from all of these sights and sounds into the locker room.

“It was quiet in the locker room,” he said. “Everybody was real mad (Friday night). Nobody was saying anything. Usually Doc talks, and then you hear (Kevin Garnett) and those guys talk to keep us all up, to let us know we’ve got to continue to keep playing hard. (Friday night) right after the game, everybody was pretty quiet, pretty mad.”

But anger, like talk, can be greatly overrated.

Terry, who had visions of a championship when he signed for three years last summer, admits that his anger, like everyone else’s, needs more than a short fuse. It needs the kind of focus that has been absent in the Celtics’ performance over the last three games.

“You can be angry all you want, but how are you going to channel that anger?” said Terry. “Fight amongst yourselves, or are you going to come out and fight your opponent? Are you going to show that anger against these guys who are kicking your butt?

“There was some showboating going on out there a little bit, which I don’t care for,” he said. “But they have every right to do so. They’re up 3-0. There’s no pressure on them. They can come out here (today) and show up, and they think they’ve got it won.”

Asked if said showboating would drive his approach today, Terry said, “For me it does, I don’t know about anybody else. It is what it is. You’re up 3-0, you have every right to be confident. Hopefully it comes back to bite them, but you have to make it come back to bite them. You can’t just say ‘OK, we’ll show up and shame on them.’ We still haven’t played a good game, but you have to figure we’re going to do so. If not you’re going home.”

Rivers, who has the longest memory, has seen many instances of displaced anger being anything but constructive.

“I don’t care what it is. You could be calm. That would be good, too,” said Rivers. “Everyone has different emotions. It’s all good as long as they work together when they get on the floor. (Terry) is a very, very competitive human being, and that’s why I love him. He’s great to have on your team because of that. Even when he doesn’t play well, he’s always in it for the right reasons. There’s no phony stuff with him. He wears it on his sleeve, he always speaks the truth in the locker room, he owns up to any mistake he’s made. He’s the perfect guy to have on your team. You know why he’s won a title and you know why he’s a good player.”

In this situation, though, desperation probably counts for more than anger over the knowledge that most people believe the Celtics are buried.

“Nah, I mean that drove us from the beginning,” said Bradley. “Nobody had us winning. A lot of people said they were going to sweep us and that was my motivation and I’m sure it was everybody else’s. But we tried not to pay attention to that. We tried to just worry about ourselves and that’s what we’re trying to do now. It’s just frustrating that we’re down three. It’s just hard man. Three losses in a row. That’s tough.”

And as much as some might try to suppress those images from Friday night, they will serve a purpose today.

“We all (saw the showboating). That’s what made us so mad, so angry,” said Bradley. “We just got to go out there and play the right way. We’ve got to not let that happen again. All we can do is go out there and play the right way and play hard and don’t give them a chance to showboat at all.”